Traditional Bicycle Wheel Building

At Richards of England we build and restore wheels. We manufacture replacement hubs such as brass flange direct screw and pressed tangent hubs. We manufacture spokes from various gauges of wire, 8g, 10g, 12g, 14g. We have created a heading machine so we can make any length of spoke and head them in the rim when using butted spokes. We have a machine setup for reproducing butted spokes with a long smooth taper like originally used by Singer Bicycles. This gives us the capability to manufacture different lengths and styles with a few tool changes. We also can manufacture wheel rims for veteran bicycles

Penny Farthing and Safety Bicycle Wheel Rims

Here at Richards of England we make handmade wheel rims in any size, any hole diameter angle etc.. We can work on various rim profiles for restorations, we mainly make a hollow crescent profile based on a period roadster shape. We have used our various rim profiles on many restorations. Solid tyre rubber in stock to suit the standard rims.

The manufacture of wheel rims is an art form certainly on the larger diameter wheels such as used on ordinary bicycles. Visualise a 60″ penny farthing wheel rim, the length of steel to produce such a large wheel rim would be over 5 meters if you include the overlap to create the perfect join. This poses many challenges producing the profile without the steel twisting. 500 wheel rims in and counting, every new profile design needs some development in the process.

Solid Rubber Tyre in stock

Various sizes available to fit most original ordinary bicycles.